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Authorities said Sunday that more than 220,000 people have been evacuated due to the largest forest fire currently scorching southwestern France, which has also shut down highways and rail lines in the area.
More than 50,000 additional people have been requested to leave villages around Bordeaux. "We're very vigilant. We're ready for anything," Bordeaux mayor Thomas Cazenave said, adding that there were no current plans to move the city's 270,000 residents.
He estimated that the flames raged between 25 and 30 kilometres (between 15 and 18 miles) from the city itself and around 15 kilometres from the metropolitan area near the town of Martignas-sur-Jalle.
The fire, which is believed to have started accidentally in the village of Saumos on Wednesday, spread rapidly and eventually forced the evacuation of around 220,000 people, making it one of the largest evacuation operations in French history.
France's interior minister, Laurent Nunez, said a massive wildfire in the southwestern Gironde region, near Bordeaux, "became extremely intense and unpredictable again" overnight. It was "generating its own winds and advancing erratically toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area", he said.
He added that a total of 2,500 firefighters, including a Swiss firefighting team, 1,500 military personnel and around 1,200 police have been deployed to Gironde.
The Gironde fire in southwest France has now burned 42,000 hectares (103,000 acres), regional authorities said Sunday, making it one of the country's largest land losses since World War II. A 1949 blaze consumed some 50,000 hectares.
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